


rosemary & rue

by netherstqrs



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-War, Supernatural Elements, i took the "tommy loves flowers" and "pogtopia is haunted" hcs and ran w them lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29656917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/netherstqrs/pseuds/netherstqrs
Summary: Tommy's wanted to visit the abandoned Pogtopia for a long time now, ever since Phil told him that Wil's grave was there. He doesn't care about the rumours that it's haunted—he's dealt with much worse.So he brings flowers for Wilbur.He doesn't expect to get something back.
Relationships: Ranboo & Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 5
Kudos: 188





	rosemary & rue

From the warm deciduous forest into the plains and scrublands, Tommy scours the ground, searching for blooms of indigo, lavender, and yellow among the greys and greens of the undergrowth. When he finds one, he kneels to study it for a moment before carefully severing its stem at an angle with his knife. Then he adds it to his ever-growing bouquet.

He’s looking for three kinds of flowers, today. Cornflowers, rosemary, and rue. They’re the most appropriate, he thinks, for what he’s going to do. 

He reaches down to snip another sprig of wild rosemary from its stem and tucks it into the bundle of the rest of the flowers. Wiping sweat from his brow, he straightens and squints at the sun. It’s a little past five o’clock, judging by the position. Plenty of time, then. He looks down at the bouquet, and smiles, not without some bitterness. Good enough for him. 

\---

The flowers are a little wilted by the time Tommy reaches the entrance to Pogtopia, but he reckons Wil won’t mind. Once he’s just within the shadowy crevice that marks the opening to the ravine, he pulls a lantern from his satchel and sets his flowers on the ground so he can light it. His hands are shaking a little, but he pretends they aren’t.

He strikes a match, and it flares into bright hot flame, bringing the cave’s rocky walls into sharp relief. A sudden draft swirls up the rough-hewn stone staircase near the back of the cave. The match goes out.

Tommy stares at the burnt match for a minute. Then he scoffs and pulls a new one from the box. This one stays lit, despite the wind, but Tommy shivers anyway as he lights the lantern’s wick. 

He shuts the lantern and shakes out the match, tucking the splinters of both used matches into his pocket. Gathering his flowers from the ground, he stands and holds the lantern aloft. The shadows which had seemed so threatening moments ago flee before the warm light, and Tommy squares his shoulders as best he can. He takes a breath, and swallows his fear, only for it to return more strongly. 

He has to do this. For himself, and for Wilbur. 

Step by hesitant step, he makes his way down the spiral stairs that lead into the ravine of Pogtopia itself. Tubbo, earlier, had looked at him askance when he’d said he was going to visit their old home. “It’s completely abandoned down there. Are you sure, Tommy?” he’d said.

Tommy had said something manly and brave in response, only he couldn’t quite remember what. Now that he was actually down here, though… he didn’t feel so brave. He has the lantern, of course, but light can only do so much to comfort. 

He steps out from the staircase, onto the wooden platforms that line the walls, into the dark place that Pogtopia has become. The darkness seems to push in at him, making his lantern-light flickering and feeble. It’s suffocating, tangible, endless. 

Tommy isn’t quite sure where Wilbur’s grave is within Pogtopia. He only knows that after the battle, and the first explosion of L’manburg, that Phil brought his body to rest here. He peers into the darkness, leaning over the railing, and swings his lantern around.

Out of the corner of his eye, a somehow luminous shadow slips past. He whirls. The lantern illuminates… a rocky wall. A chest. Some debris. The wooden floor. In short, nothing. 

Tommy waits a second for his heart rate to slow down, and tells himself that he is a big man. He is not afraid of ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real. Ghosts are fuckin’ _pussies_. 

As he descends further into the depths of the ravine, the planks that are laid across one another to form the rough balcony floors creak beneath his feet. It’s unsteadying—he doesn’t remember them being this precarious before. 

As Tommy is traversing one of the rickety bridges that spans across the ravine, something echoes, faint yet startling, in the distant darkness of the cavern. He cocks his head to listen. It could have just been a rock disturbed by the tremors in the bridge hitting the bottom, he thinks, but then it comes again, and he hears it clear as day. It’s not the clattering of loose stones at all, but a whisper. 

_Tommy._

A chill trickles down his neck like drops of icy water. “What do you want?” he yells into the blackness. “Who are you?”

There is no response but the airless silence of the stifling dark.

Tommy clutches the rope rail of the bridge in one hand, and his precious light-giving lantern in the other, and painstakingly makes his way across the rest of the bridge. When he reaches the wooden platform of the other side, he lets himself slide down the wall and sits on the floor, shaking. 

He’d heard the rumours. Pogtopia was where dead things go to become un-dead, Pogtopia held angry spirits within its walls, Pogtopia drove good men mad and mad men madder. All but the last, he hadn’t expected to be the truth. But since he’d left… it had changed.

Tommy remembered Pogtopia not as this dark, forsaken place, but as somewhere that contained an abundance of light, even though it was far from the sun. He remembered Tubbo’s high laugh, and Wilbur’s begrudging smile, and Techno’s gruff chuckle. He remembered it full of life and memory and hope. A beacon of the resistance. A place where things always carried on. A place that remained.

Oh, it had remained, all right, Tommy thought to himself bitterly. But nothing can ever remain the same for long.

He takes a long drink of water from his canteen and lets the metallic-tasting water ground him, bring him back to his senses. He can’t—won’t—leave until he finds somewhere good to put the flowers.

And ghosts are fuckin’ _pussies_ , anyway.

So he steels himself, stands, and continues his descent.

\---

It takes him a good while, but Tommy makes his way down to the bottom of the ravine. He trails his hand along the rough stone of the walls and breathes in the air. It smells of wet earth and must. Tommy knows it well.

He ignores the shivers that crawl up his back as he follows the walls along the ravine floor. His footsteps echo out into the cave despite his efforts to keep them quiet. As he casts his gaze around the space that his lantern’s sphere of light illuminates, he keeps an eye out for anything that looks vaguely like a cairn or memorial. His sight catches on several carved doorways in the walls, familiar but crumbling. There’s a distinct smell of soil and rotting vegetation from the first, as well as the faint gurgle of water. The next, he remembers as having a locked wooden door in the frame, but when he shines his lantern on it, nothing remains of this but splinters on the ground. 

A memory arises, unwanted but provoked at the sight. Wilbur, a grin on his face, turning away to retreat into this specific room. Tommy hadn’t noticed it at the time, but hindsight brings clarity, and he realizes that Wilbur’s eyes and smile had barely contained a wild, flickering fervor, his face cast into shadow by the harsh torchlight. 

Reeling slightly from the vivid quality of the recollection, Tommy holds his lantern up to the yawning doorway. He’d never been allowed inside Wil’s study. Techno had, but only once, and that particular visit had ended in a shouting match (which he and Tubbo had onlooked, terrified). 

He hesitates. Then he steps through the doorway.

The ceiling in here is low, and at a quick glance the room appears to be a normal study, only covered in debris and dust. Upon closer inspection, though, Tommy realizes that the detritus he’s seeing is really made up of books. Loose papers and errant pages litter the floor, some torn and mud-soaked, others almost wholly intact. Shards of wood have impaled themselves into the ground, and Tommy’s lantern casts its light upon a wrecked bookshelf, lying forlornly by the right wall.

Tommy picks his way through the mess, to the back of the room. There is a desk here, eerily untouched as compared to the rest of the study. A thick layer of dust covers its surface. Papers are stacked neatly in the centre of the desk. Despite his better judgement, Tommy sets the lantern and the wilted flowers on the smooth mahogany and begins flipping through the pages. 

Every single sheet is covered in Wilbur’s tiny, scrawling handwriting, stringing words together that Tommy has to squint to understand. It takes him a minute to realize what he’s reading: poetry. 

Tommy frowns. He’d never taken Wilbur as the poetry type. But here, against all odds, is evidence to the contrary.

He pulls a chair out from underneath the desk and carefully sits, then keeps reading through the poems. Some are fragments, half-finished, and angrily scribbled upon. Some, though, are full verses. Tommy can tell these ones from the rest because Wilbur signs his name on the finished ones with a flourish. 

He flips a page over and turns to the next. This poem is formatted differently than many of the rest. He skims through the words briefly, and is about to turn to the next page when he notices that the poem is titled “For Tommy”. 

_Does the spark understand what it has done, when it lights the flame? When the stone comes loose and half the mountainside crashes down on the world, does it wonder at the destruction it has caused? These are lessons you have yet to learn. These are voices you have yet to hear.  
I like to think that what I am going to do will help you learn. But you’ve never been one for owning up to your mistakes. I hope that will change, Tommy; I really, really do. Until then, I hope you will remember me. _

_Ever your brother, though you may not know it.  
Wilbur. _

Tommy stares at the page, uncomprehending. 

These words are Wilbur’s, written for him, and he hasn’t seen them until now. Wilbur, when he was alive, held a pen, wrote these words on this paper, watched as the ink dried, and then… left them here. Tommy is holding Wilbur’s memory, Wilbur’s ghost, in his hands. 

He reads over the words again, and does his best to figure out what they mean. When had Wil written this? It must have been right before the final Manburg confrontation. And why hadn’t he given it to Tommy? Was he supposed to be reading this? And why, why did Wilbur write as if… as if he would have destroyed Manburg regardless of the battle’s outcome?

Had Wilbur ever trusted him?

Tommy’s lantern goes out.

He stands stock-still for a moment, pulled from his reflections. “No,” he mutters, “no, no, no.” He scrabbles through his satchel for the matchbox. With trembling hands, he finds it and strikes a match. It snaps in half and falls uselessly to the floor, where dust immediately covers it. He pulls out another and looks up.

A faint, dusty shadow stands on the other side of the desk. 

As Tommy watches in shock, it coalesces into something vaguely human, vaguely familiar. He swears it raises a hand, smiles, reaches out for the wilting flowers on the desk, an expression resembling pity or sadness or some other wistful emotion on its face. 

Tommy blinks. 

It’s gone.

He collapses to the floor, sobbing.

\---

Ranboo and Tubbo find him curled up beside a crack in the wall, clutching a bundle of loose papers to his chest, and softly, softly weeping.

“Hey, big man,” Tubbo says gently, placing his lantern on the ground and kneeling beside Tommy. “You alright?”

Ranboo glances around the ravine’s interior. “It’s really late, Tommy. How long have you… been in here?”

Tommy says nothing for a long time. The other two wait, patiently albeit nervously.

Finally, Tommy clears his throat and uses his shirtsleeve to wipe at his eyes. He sits up. Ranboo and Tubbo share a look that he pretends not to notice. 

“I found these, Tubbo,” he says in a hoarse voice. “They’re Wil’s.”

Tubbo takes the pages and flips through them, pausing to study each one. There’s a minute of silence, before he says, “I can’t make these out, Ranboo. Would you…?”

Ranboo nods wordlessly and begins to read. “They’re… songs,” he says, eyes flicking back and forth, tail swishing nervously. “No, poems, actually.”

Tommy swallows the lump in his throat and says, again, “They’re Wil’s.”

Tubbo looks at him for a moment and seems to understand. He gently takes the papers back from Ranboo and places them in Tommy’s outstretched hands. “C’mon, big man. Let’s get you home to Snowchester.”

Tommy lets Ranboo and Tubbo help him up from the ground and scrubs at his tear-streaked face with his bandanna. Tubbo pats him on the back, gingerly, and picks up his lantern. “Shall we?” he asks, gesturing in what Tommy assumes is the direction of the exit from the ravine. 

Ranboo laughs, and Tommy nods, a smile spreading across his face. Making sure they’ve gathered everything, the three start on their trek upwards, out of Pogtopia. 

And so, together, they make their way out from the darkness, into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed! comments & kudos much appreciated <3
> 
> follow me on twitter: @netherstqrs


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